The Twilight of American Culture

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Summary: Superb, erudite analysis of civilization(s); dated solution
Review: I heard Prof. Berman on a radio show and was very excited to hear that he had written a new book. I really looked forward to reading it. I very much respect his scholarly, erudite analyses of whatever topic he chooses to write about. He selects top-notch references and integrates them with his own thinking and insights. I wish I could have studied with him at some point in my own studies.

"The Twilight of American Culture" definitely lived up to my expectations. I enjoyed the second read tremendously - I must have written down notes on about 30 books to check into at some point, some very soon!

Prof. Berman's basic contentions are that we are in period of serious cultural decline, brought about by the dumbing down of education and culture by a lowest common denominator corporate takeover of everything. The corporate co-opting of everything, combined with the nihilistic dictum of postmodernism, that there is no truth, that everything is relative, is diminishing our culture down to the point that we live in a "McWorld," where materialism and money are the only things of value, where there is a rush of busy-ness, but it is often very empty. True education and true culture are almost non-existent, especially in main stream mass communication. Universities are no longer institutions of education, but rather in a sense like shopping malls where professors treat students as customers instead of challenging them. Yet Prof. Berman claims that we should not be surprised by this decline. Comparing our time to the fall of the Roman Empire and its aftermath, Prof Berman demonstrates that history simply plays itself out in cycles of rise, decline, and disintegration. During and after the decline culture is preserved, generally by monks, who either realize or do not realize that they are preserving something of value for posterity.

As I expected, the author's sources are excellent, and I particularly

enjoyed his discussions of 2 science fiction books, whose authors are indeed sometimes very prescient about future trends. Bradbury's "Farenheight 451" depicts a society where reading books is banned, as opposed to the current situation, where reading isn't "cool" and is shunned, which is it's own kind of totalitarianism. Even better for me is the discussion of the sci-fi classic, "A Canticle For Leibowitz," which I had not liked when I read it, because it perfectly suits the author's illustration of the way civilizations cycle up and down, often inexplicably, and it is usually monks who preserve the culture of a fallen society, sometimes both the valuable and the ridiculous, because the monk preservers don't know the difference!

Thus Prof. Berman calls on his readers to be like monks, to preserve what is worth preserving in our culture, as it self destructs and perhaps even disintegrates. He calls on us as individuals to act alone or in small groups (he disdains large movements, "isms") and preserve our culture, our history, literature, art, etc. We can't do this with thought of reward, but given the value of what monks have done at crucial points in time we could make a big difference in the future when our civilization perhaps rises again. He also gives examples of inspiring individuals who are making a difference in perhaps "small" but effective ways to preserve culture and fight for what they believ in.

Again, the analysis is thorough and excellent, but I must take exception to some of the author's criticisms, especially as they relate to his solution. First of all, many people still read books and take part in the arts. Second, I am somewhat of a New Age thinker myself, though I do share some of his criticisms of New Age-isms. Yet where I feel that Prof. Berman makes a glaring error is in his inability to understand the value of certain aspects of New Age thinking. As I was reading the book I kept thinking of Socrates's (?) aphorism, "Know Thyself." Prof. Berman barely mentions this inner discipline, and he seems to feel that about the only way to know onself is to read books. I disagree. I feel that the intellect is only one way to self-knowledge; in fact, it is not considered so valid by many teachers I highly respect. It's not that people shouldn't read, but meditation, or simply being aware of oneself in thought and action are wonderful and vital ways to expand one's consciousness. While it is true that these self disciplines can become narcissistic, that does not invalidate them at all, in my opinion. Human ego is a problem in all aspects of life, incl. people who show off their intellect.

Since Prof. Berman uses Dr. Deepak Chopra as the most typical example of what he feels is New Age nonsense, I would counter that Dr. Chopra's last book, "How To Know God," is easily the equal of "Twilight" intellectually, and is a wonderful guide for understanding oneself and the various levels of consciousness, even if it isn't correctly titled. Dr. Chopra is a fine mixture of intellectual and non-intellectual capacities, in my opinion.

The spiritual movements and their adherents are not failures as the author claims, whatever their faults and shortcomings. I feel that spiritual practices, correctly followed, are more important to humanity's future than studying Voltaire and other great minds. People are looking for deeper meaning, they are searching for why they are here, how to find inner meaning, and what is beyond death (the author seems to feel that there is nothing - incorrect!).

Rating:
Summary: Many Points on the Mark
Review: First I must state that I am a patriotic American and truly believe and realize that the U.S. is one the, if not the most, successful nation in the last couple of centuries. We Americans are lucky to have been born here, and are lucky to be United States citizens. Yet this intriguing book taps into my disdain for what America has been devolving into culturally.

Berman notes the current intellectual collapse of the United States which most of us have become aware. Comparisons to the fall of the Roman Empire are noted. There is some truth to Berman's observations in my opinion. It is sad, and it is the choice of our modern, myopic, conspicouosly consuming, now-nowist materialistic, nation. In my opinion, traditional literary works have fallen by the way-side on college campuses so students can read a minority and/or politically correct author who can't write his or her way out of a paper bag, JUST because they are a minority or politically correct author.

We ingest chemicals and foreign substances like Prozac, Zoloft, and St. John's wort, so we can "feel good" and "function properly." Miracle diet pills, Gingko Biloba, Echinacea, self-help new age psychological books, and a Yoga class at night, give us some synthetic spirituality, while we're not driving through rush hour to our high-turnover, "reorganized" jobs. We see our families a few minutes each day, while little Johnny thinks that the Mississippi river flows in the Pacific Ocean.

As for global homogenization, here's what I gained from Berman's McWorld concepts that we're experiencing so much of today. The concept was brought to my attention by Benjamin Barber in the early 1990s.

This is an interesting and somewhat disturbing look at the United States, which always has been and is even more-so now, the intentional and unintentional active leader in transforming Earth into our generic McWorld. Encroaching global homogenization has reached Europe, Asia and South America, and it appears that these societies are culturally and intellectually slipping like the United States has been for several decades. Our free-fall into the New World Cultural-Economic order, to repeat, is being led by the culturally crassest of the crass. Sadly, most Americans are too ignorant and just plain too stupid to be aware of what is occurring. If they were cognizant of our transforming culture, they wouldn't likely care anyway. I've seen too many cases of it time after time in the U.S. and abroad.

As Berman stated, today The United States' primary exports are dense television sit-coms, MTV, Pop music, CNN, insulting corporate brands, mind-numbing advertising, and a plethora of corporate fast-food chains that we see the world over. Not the ideals of a constitutionally-based representative democracy.

There has been a devolution of American principles in many areas.

I do agree with almost all of Berman's observations. I am not entirely pessimistic about them, however because there isn't much I can personally do about it, except try to think for myself and keep my own personal sense of eclecticism. There are many factors outside of the U.S. as well that are causing us to think less for ourselves. Economic interdependence via trade, communication advancement, the Internet, free trade agreements, NAFTA, GATT, IMF, WTO, the popularity of American television shows and films by foreign cultures is also a major reason why McWorld is spreading. In other words, people from other cultures like it and want it. And it's not the fault of the United States. These other cultures are watching, buying, and absorbing it by their own choosing. At the same time, it pains me to see a Pizza Hut in Thailand, Wendy's in Europe and a Burger King in Guatemala. I might as well stay home. This is an important book that as many should read as possible.

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Summary: worth the time but.....
Review: I enjoyed Berman's book, but I did not find his conclusions to be particularly original or insightful. It is, however, worth one's time to read and ponder. He is yet another voice reminding us that things are not as they should be.

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Summary: A surprisingly bitter book
Review: Compared to Berman's previous books - most notably "Reenchantment of the World" and "Coming to Our Senses" - "The Twilight of American Culture" is a bitter book to read. Berman has only disdain for anything that has attained any degree of popularity in American culture. Oprah Winfrey, Deepok Chopra and even the voluntary simplicity movement take severe lashes from him. Predictably, the criticism he vents against major corporations and the profit motive in general is unrelenting. The book's horizon is profoundly provincial; its bias is American and Academic at the unfortunate exclusion of a necessary broader perspective.

Even more peculiarly, Berman seems to be eagerly awaiting what he calls the "Great Collapse," an apocalyptic event when something resembling the Dark Ages will befall America sometime later in the 21st Century. A proponent of cyclical patterns of history, Berman contends that a "New Enlightenment" will follow this "Great Collapse." And the "New Enlightenment" will be made possible by Berman's proposed New Monastic Individual (NMI), using Bradbury's Book People and Walter Miller's Leibowitzian monks, among others, as models for preserving cultural artifacts worth saving. Finally, Berman simply is not specific about what he believes should be preserved or how his NMIs will accomplish this formidable task. Therefore, the book - after nearly 200 pages - falls flat with a resounding thud.

My greatest disappointment with Twilight is rooted in my respect for Morris Berman as a visionary and scholar. "The Twilight of American Culture" reads like the writing of a wounded man who has failed in his personal ambition and has become desperately unhappy with the world he inhabits. He should re-read "Reenchantment of the World" to get some hope back into his life.

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Summary: Enlightening, but not Enlightenment
Review: Berman's "The Twilight of American CultureEis an admirable synthesis of the way a segment of the population-what might be called western intellectual post-postmodernists-view the moronification of American (and Americanized) culture. Packing an extraordinary amount of information into a small space, Berman vies with Neil Postman in the clarity and 'self-sacrificialEnature of his prose.

His primary argument-that the world is heading toward a collapse as global corporations replace quantity with quality in a mindless whirl of consumer-oriented glitz-is fairly self-evident. His secondary argument-that salvation, if it comes at all, will come in the form of obscure, solitary intellectual 'monksEwho leave 'memory tracesEof their humanistic activities-is also plausible given the inherent limitations of most institutions and mass movements. (That a book extolling the virtues of keeping a low profile should be trumpeted on the cover as a "national bestsellerEetc. is mildly ironic, while also perhaps indicating that the ideas within are a bit more trendy than Berman would care to acknowledge.)

My main objection to the book, however, is its apparent narrowness. At times one gets the feeling that what Berman really wants in a society of Bermans, and that his view of mass conformity is really a kind of Jungian shadow projection. He seems to have little tolerance for anything that might lie outside an Enlightenment mentality, citing Voltaire as the ideal intellectual. All the rest he tends to dismiss as New Age claptrap of one kind or another.

While he certainly has a point about all the pseudo-spiritual 'Chopras and OprahsEthe postmodern free-for-all has thrown up, one has to wonder where he would place the Chuang-tzu or Tripitaka, Bhagavad-Gita or Gospels, Bardo Thodol or Book of Job. It seems pretty clear where Voltaire would place them.

In all fairness, I have not yet read Berman's other works, most notably "Wandering God,Ewhich may present a broader, more balanced picture. In this work, however, his modern-day monks would appear to be primarily academics, activists, and aesthetes armed with "To the LighthouseEand "Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionEand with little comprehension of a life inclined toward meditation or prayer, or even 'inspiredEart for that matter. In the space of a sentence he does claim that his project is 'sacredEas well as secular, but then confines his definition of sacred to a via negativa more or less identical to philosophical skepticism.

If anything good has come out of the forces shaping the past hundred years or so, surely it is the availability to the west of ideas and practices that stand outside the western Enlightenment tradition. Though Berman acknowledges the impossibility of a straightforward return to Enlightenment ideals, the only modifying force he seems willing to admit is the brighter side of western deconstructionism which has made us more epistemologically self-reflexive. He is certainly right that a shallow multiculturalism is hardly the answer either. Yet surely we ignore to our peril the antidote that, say, Buddhism or Hinduism (every bit as philosophically developed as western philosophy-arguably more so) or even Native American practice might offer, as opposed to pursuing merely a 'goodEversion of Enlightenment to save us from a 'badEversion. Aren't there other versions of 'enlightenment' we might consider as well? This type of in-breeding is never healthy, however vigorously defended by the elite.

Academics, it has been said, live in a small conceptual world while thinking it a large one. Telling in this respect are all the books Professor Berman does not cite in his study (which are clearly beneath contempt, except for passing shots at 'New AgeEpeople like Joseph Campbell) in addition to the predominantly professor-generated ones he does. On the whole, I would not critique Berman for being an "elitistE(a label he prides himself on), and certainly the intellectual decline of Western (and Eastern) culture is a thing to be lamented, feared, and fought against. But I also imagine the majority of authentic 'monksEout there are swimming in waters deeper and fairly far removed from the places where this book casts its narrow net.

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Summary: Berman, take your own advice!
Review: Berman's main point in this book is that people need to learn to think for themselves, so obviously I found it strange (and rather funny) that the book contained only a list of hundreds of other writers and their ideas, no ideas by Berman himself. He does not demonstrate that he is a reliable source on the subject of thinking for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Dumbed down -- now what?
Review: No beach book is this. Like John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Daniel Boorstein's The Image, Berman's The Twilight of American Culture is a book that inspires copious note-taking and several runs to the library to find the many texts to which he refers in making his impassioned argument for a monastic approach to preserving what is best about our culture.

Writes Berman, "Our entire consciousness, our intellectual-mental life, is being Starbuckized, condensed into a prefabricated designer look in a way that is reminiscent of that brilliant, terrible film, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a great metaphor for our time)."

Other reviewers may offer an erudite deconstruction of Berman's text; admittedly, his argument is flawed in places. But I am not as concerned with Berman's missteps because his abiding conviction that we must quietly, monastically pursue the preservation of what is best about our culture -- our history, our literature and music, our scientific knowledge, our ability to critically reason -- resonates with me.

In short, eschew McWorld. Be not afraid when you allude to Shakespeare, the bible, or Dickens and your audience looks at you askance. Be an alien in our culture's "hardening phase," when its form is preserved but its content is lost. Be like a lonely monk, gathering scraps of what is best about about us for the civilizations that follow after our dark age.

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Summary: Self vs. McSelf
Review: Berman's latest work is a typically brilliant insight into the experience of self in the modern world.

The "twilight" he refers to, although focussed on "American Culture" proper, can reasonably refer to any on the planet. The dichotomy of living a life that expresses the best traits of humankind, while immersed in a global zeitgeist that actively rejects such sensibilities, resonates on a universal level.

Berman may have some critics who question his pure scholarship, but let us recall that he approaches his theses from the vantage point of body/mind experience - something very few pure academics dare to try.

The result, in this magnificent book as in Berman's previous works, is a challenge to the reader to actively engage in the ideas put forth.

Berman's "monastic" option is sensitive, non-commercial, and rejects self-promotion. There are no Nobel prizes given for those who choose to live a fully developed, human life. Certainly, there is no fame and fortune in being a preserver of the human, and humane, experience of our species.

This relates directly to the subtitle of Berman's equally great book, "Coming to our Senses" - Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. The monastic option is clearly part of the legacy of this hidden history. Living it out is a singular pleasure with no apparent rewards or congratulations from our fellow citizens.

Berman's main point, I believe, is to define the critical difference between circumstantial and willful ignorance.

As the mystics often say, "Once awakened, would you willingly go back to sleep?"

Berman's book is an awakening in the deepest sense. Sleep at your own peril.

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Summary: Twilight of the academic left
Review: Like all such "sky is falling" type pieces, I was mildly intrigued, hoping to come across at least one original insight. I was shortly disabused as I began to experience that sensation one has on a trip one knows is irrelevant-- you realise you don't need to take it soon after you've already locked your door.

Berman's work, despite its melodramatic title, doesn't get frothy about the day to day of the 'real world'-- instead, he gets inordinately hissy about what goes on in the PC world of academe-- which was abandoned long ago by his so-called NMIs (oh, discover the secret of this ridiculous acronym yourself!). Listen to him (...)endlessly about the typical "dumbing down" statistics (despite what American technology continues to achieve in sphere after sphere). His grasp of economics-- the level of a Bulgarian civics instructor in 1975. He doesn't like the fact that Bill Gates is so rich-- in an era when life expectancy has rocketed forward and poverty (in the West) is determined by how few TVs one owns. He doesn't like Starbucks (I don't either) but doesn't understand or bother to explore why it (and the rest of his McWorld) is so successful. His heroes: Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. 'Nuff said.

He sneers at Christians who home school, throwing a blanket charge of anti-intellectualism over them, while admiting a closet admiration for white supremacists who resist the Feds with stockpiled arms caches. And while he rightly criticises the PC/multi-cult brigade, the dots he doesn't connect link that crew right back to his own "make capitalism go away please" ideology of...well, I can't even characterise it. It is nonsensical and seems centered only when it has to do with Berman's conception of how higher education should operate. Because, you see, what he's really after....

What does he REALLY want?: Berman, in a toga, droning on like your worst prof in University about all his various opinions to a literally captive audience of acolytes.

Sorry, class bell just rang, Prof. Berman. Gotta go. In the big university of Life, my man, you ain't ever gonna get tenure until you begin to apply some academic discipline against your own mish mash of stale ideas and envy. See you next term-- NOT!

Rating:
Summary: Oh, come on, now!
Review: Sure, almost everything Mr. Berman says is true and is indeed a powerful indictment of the ills of our contemporary American civilization -- BUT WHEN WAS IT ANY DIFFERENT? In what golden age were things that much better? I've lived through the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and now we're well into the 00's; and I can assure you that the amount of stupidity, greed, crassness and evil (as well as the amount of intelligence, generosity, and goodness) in our society during that time has been pretty constant. The forms change but the basic human inputs do not.
Mr. Berman appears to live in quite a different world than I do. Most of the people that I know have jobs, family, friends, a real place in the world and a relatively stable day-to-day existence, and if someone does come upon hard times (job loss, illness, family trouble) the rest of this social net helps to sustain that person. Jeremiads are fun to write and, in moderation, fun to read, but let's keep a sense of proportion.